Plugin interface — screenshot pending
Drum Machine

Drum Rack

Ableton

Where to get itIncluded with Ableton Live. It is part of that DAW, not a separate download.ableton.com

Drum Rack is Ableton Live's specialized drum machine instrument designed for creating and performing drum kits with intuitive MIDI note mapping and choke group control. It combines a chain-based architecture with a unique Pad View interface that maps each of 128 MIDI notes to customizable drum sounds, making it distinctive for fast kit design, sample layering, and hardware control surface integration.

Written from the manual and checked against it. How we check

Key Features

01128 MIDI note pads with automatic mapping and GM drum equivalents
0216 choke groups for realistic hi-hat and cymbal control
03Drag-and-drop pad filling from browser (samples, effects, instruments, presets)
04Multi-sample layering with nested Instrument Racks per pad
05Up to six return chains with send sliders for post-fader effects routing
06Hot-Swap mode toggle (D key) for quick device replacement while preserving effects
07Hardware control surface integration with automatic pad update on scroll
08Pad View for focusing on top-level notes and sounds across nested Rack structures

Things to Try

  • 01Drag multiple samples onto one pad while holding Alt (Win) / Cmd (Mac) to layer them into a nested Instrument Rack
  • 02Set Receive chooser to the same MIDI note for multiple chains to trigger them all from a single pad
  • 03Use Choke chooser to assign chains to the same group number (1–16) to silence other chains in that group when triggered
  • 04Press D key in Hot-Swap mode to toggle the Hot-Swap target between the Drum Rack and the last selected pad for quick editing
User Manual↗

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